World Order and Governance Reflected from Failed/Fragile States: A Perspective of Development Study

抄録

Over the past decade, much attention has been paid to the problem of failed/fragile states. In most cases, failed/fragile states have been argued from the perspective of developed countries or international society. Many discourses on failed/fragile states have been based on the interests or policy requests of developed countries and international society. This paper reconsiders these mainstream perspectives on failed/fragile states.

For this purpose, first, I will reconsider how developed countries and international society are responsible for state failure in developing countries. A majority of academic works on failed/fragile states explain that the cause of state failure is mainly characterized by local factors. However, these discourses often obscure the role of soldiers, weapons, and funds for civil wars in failed/fragile states, which are all supplied through developed countries and international society. I emphasize that developed countries and international society should be held responsible for civil wars that occur in the world’s poorest countries.

Second, I indicate that the world is becoming increasingly unequal because the gap among countries has widened from 1980 onward, and explain why developed countries and international society consider the world’ s poorest countries as failed/fragile states in the age of globalization. In the process of globalization, developed countries tend to be sensitive to global risk and to regard the world’s poorest countries as the origins of this risk. Generally, these two tendencies are strengthened due to the gap between the developed and poorest countries, which has been increasing over the past 30 years. This is why developed countries and international society consider the world’s poorest countries as failed/fragile states.

Finally, I examine the demand for good governance in failed/fragile states through SSR (Security Sector Reform) as a form of institutional development. Institutional development is usually a lengthy process, and international society does not yet possess adequate knowledge regarding the appropriate sequence of such development and the complex interdependency of institutions in developing countries. Therefore, the impatient demand for good governance is a rather problematic one in failed/fragile states.